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She walked the wrong way
back in time
away from her parents
left staring at the Miocene hominids.
She sidled
against the flow of natural
history museum visitors
to a diorama depicting the first –
her first – horse.
E o hip pus, Eohippus,
she whispered the beast’s
syllables from its exhibit legend,
peered through her glasses
through the glass, and slowly counted:
One, two of them, a mated pair
near logs of giant early Tertiary trees
on a jungle floor around the edges
of a primordial pool, swampy-green,
lush. One, two, three, four toes
to the front, one two three
to the rear, and a dozen spotted
lines along their arching rusty backs.
Like twin fawns, spindly-legged, she
fancied, and, oddly to her, like
familiars, inviting.
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